It’s cool, he whispered to his father when the women were out of earshot. When he turns three, he’s all mine.
Asha and Jada stop occasionally to browse the stalls, and Asha buys organic preserves, fruit and two loaves of hard-crusted bread, which she adds to an earth-friendly burlap tote slung over one shoulder. She is wearing a cotton tank now, and an ankle-length skirt that barely swishes the ground.
“I think she really belongs in Oakland,” Kaleem says to his father, keeping his voice low. “Soon as the Olympics are over and I get this degree, we’re moving there.”
“She doesn’t want to move back to New York?” Ibrahim asks. “To be closer to her mother?”
“She’s never been close to her mother,” Kaleem says. “Not even when they lived in the same house. And if we moved east, we’d be too far away from you and Ma.”
Ibrahim is moved by that last sentiment. That his son wants to raise his family close by.
“She wants to have another one,” Kaleem confides. “Like, soon.”
“How soon you talkin’ ‘bout?” Ibrahim asks.
“Now.”
Kaleem laughs, but Ibrahim says nothing.
“I know you probably think that’s stupid, right?” His son sobers up a little. “Before I got a career or anything, to be making more babies. But …”
“I think you have to do what feels right for you and your wife, Kaleem. I have no judgment about what that might be.”
“You bein’ all diplomatic right now, man. I want to know what you really think. You think that’s dumb? To be seriously considering it?”
“Will you be able to support them?” Ibrahim asks. “Your wife and children? If you have more?”
Kaleem shrugs. “So far, so good. I mean, with endorsement deals and stuff, yeah. But that’s passive income mostly, right? And probably temporary. I need to make sure things are straight for the future, too.”
“That’s what school is for.”
“Yeah. Exactly. So … don’t do it? Is that what you sayin’?”
Looking at his son, Ibrahim sees in Kaleem’s eyes that his opinion really does matter. His might even be the deciding opinion.
“I think,” he begins, speaking slowly, “that you have a wife who asks for very little, and who supports all your dreams. Her dream seems to include having a larger family. And I think you’re a smart, capable and enterprising man who will always find a way to take care of his family, no matter how large it is.”
Kaleem stared at him for a moment and finally smiled, shaking his head. “Should’ve known better than to expect a straightforward answer from you, Prophet.”
Ibrahim looks at him in surprise.
He’s almost certainly never told his son he used to be called that. It was a name he left behind when he left his old lifestyle behind. Maybe Jada mentioned it, but even she hasn’t called him that in years.
“Well, I don’t know for sure that’s what you mean, but I’ma just take that as license to be fruitful and multiply,” Kaleem jokes.
He stops at a nearby stall and picks up a shiny, green Granny Smith apple.
“Want one?” he asks.
Ibrahim nods. “I’ll take two,” he says.
18
Then
“Hey. Who’re you?”
Ibrahim jumped at the unexpected sound of a voice nearby, coming from a few feet lower than eye-level. Near the back of the room he had just entered, between two desks and on the floor, a young man sat, legs crossed, the sides of his feet resting on opposite thighs. He wore a t-shirt that gaped at the neck, exposing thin clavicles, sleeves from which protruded equally bony arms. With it, he wore loose black sweatpants and his feet were bare.
He was thin, and his head was almost completely shaved, and he had rich, dark skin, almost as dark as Ibrahim’s. Sitting there on the floor he looked so incongruous that Ibrahim wondered whether he was one of the area’s many homeless mentally ill, and had broken in, to squat for the night.
“I’m with ProClean, the …”
“Oh yes,” the young man said. “The recyclers.”
“Yeah,” Ibrahim said. “The recyclers.”
Samuel had confessed to Ibrahim one night that the reason he had gotten so many jobs in the university area was because he assured some of the prospective clients that he would recycle or safely dispose of their waste. He didn’t. Most of it he arranged to have dumped by one of his boys who hauled it all the way back to Alameda County and dropped it in the most easily accessible landfill, which was one that didn’t even specialize in hazardous waste.
Tonight was unusual. It seldom happened, but occasionally, Samuel would drop them off at a site and people would still be working. Most of the time, there would be a group of three or four, and they would mostly ignore Ibrahim, the Polish woman (whose name he now knew was Klara) or The Mexican Girls and go on arguing about algorithms or whatever. This site, a small bungalow at the end of a street in a semi-residential neighborhood was one of the converted office spaces that were on their schedule. Usually, if it was a small enough place, Samuel would leave only two people to work on it, and swing by later to get them after two or three hours.
Tonight, one of the girls called in sick, so someone had to work alone.
It’s gotta be you, man, Samuel told Ibrahim. Can’t take no chances with the women.
Though that meant he would be doing twice as much cleaning, Ibrahim understood. It would be a foolish tempting of fate to leave any of the others alone at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood, to navigate a building with eight or nine rooms where unexpected threats might be waiting around the corner.
But this skinny, young guy looked like a threat to no one; not even to himself.
Ibrahim relaxed. He was still holding his cleaning supplies, a bucket, a mop, a broom, and dragging behind him the industrial-strength Dyson.
“Just clean around me,” the guy on the floor said, a slightly amused look in his eyes. “I’ll be as still as a statue.”
Then, when Ibrahim seemed to be thinking about that, he sprung up with remarkable agility, and was suddenly crouched, weight on the balls of his feet, and moments after that, fully upright.
He was about as tall as Ibrahim but as thin as a beanpole, but now, standing, he seemed anything but weak. Instead he looked wiry, and strong.
“Yoga,” he indicated the floor where he had been sitting, then extended a hand to Ibrahim. “I’m Raj. You are?”
Unaccustomed to being addressed directly by the clients, let alone having a hand extended to him, Ibrahim hesitated before putting down his bucket and extending his own.
Raj’s handshake was firm and betrayed a strength that was only hinted at in his coiled, sinewy physique.
“Ibrahim.”
“Father of many,” Raj said.
“What?”
“Your name. That’s what it means. Father of many.”
Ibrahim smiled.
People were often fascinated or made curious by his name, but he had never met anyone already schooled in its meaning, perhaps even more than Ibrahim himself was.
“You probably know it’s a derivative of Abraham, the prophet and messenger. But did you know that some translations say his name was originally ‘Abram’, which means something slightly different, ‘exalted father’. But either way, if your name is your destiny, it means that fatherhood is likely to be a key to your fate, and important part of your identity.”
He had a very slight accent; the kind a person picks up from growing up with parents whose accents are much thicker.
Ibrahim studied him with narrowed eyes.
He was beginning to reassess whether Raj might in fact be a vagrant. Some of them could seem remarkably lucid. There was an old man two blocks from his house who quoted MLK and spoke intelligently about segregation and Jim Crow until he got to the part where he claimed to be the reincarnation of assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
“I’ll let you get to work,” Raj said brightly, whe
n he saw that Ibrahim didn’t intend to respond. “Yoga and meditation might not be happening tonight. May as well get the rest of my own work done.”
He turned and went to sit at one of the nearby desks, picking up a pair of eyeglasses and putting them on, and placing a pencil between his teeth. His shoulders slumped a little as he leaned in, poring over the papers on the desk.
Making his way toward the rear of the house, Ibrahim started on the bathrooms first. Thankfully, in these homes converted to offices, there were generally only two or three.
Before getting to work on the commodes, he put his headphones on and cued up Big Daddy Kane. These days everybody was all about NWA, but tonight Ibrahim was feeling like something more mellow; something to match his mood.
He was hitting a stride. A slow, easy, comfortable one. No doubt this gig was still a crappy one, but it gave him something he didn’t even know he needed: space. Living with his father and brothers was cool, and he liked having family close, but lately when he got off the phone after talking to Jada, it felt like a jarring return to a more chaotic reality to hear Immanuel cussing in the kitchen, or his father yelling at Isaac to get his “shit outta the living room.”
Ibrahim liked how he felt after talking to her. In a world of sharp angles and edges, she was softness and smoothness and the lulling sound of a well-modulated voice. The night after they went to the beach, he had removed the house phone from the wall and found a longer cord so he could pull it into his room for more privacy.
Immanuel raised an eyebrow when he saw that but didn’t ask any questions. Since they had never been too private or too precious about their relationships with females, Ibrahim knew his brother had to be curious. He was probably curious about a lot of the changes he had seen lately.
Which library you go to? Ibrahim had asked Jada when they last spoke.
She mentioned once that after school, she sometimes went to the library to knock out her homework and studying so she could spend time at home watching television and with friends, or her mother. Ibrahim thought it was cute that she would admit to wanting to spend time with her mother.
She told him which branch of the Oakland Public Library system she went to, then paused. Why? Would you come see me there?
Thinkin’ about it.
Well if you did, that … that would be cool, she said eventually.
Ibrahim heard the pleasure in her voice and decided right then that he would find a way to get over to the library, even if he had to borrow Nasim’s ride for the hundredth time.
~~~
He got through the bathrooms, three offices and the breakroom in just under an hour. Finally, he moved to the rear of the bungalow where there were several large computers occupying most of the floor space. The temperature back there was several degrees colder than the rest of the building and Ibrahim could hear the air conditioning units working mightily. Beneath that was a constant droning hum from the machines, audible even over the sound of the music being piped in through his headphones.
Each machine was almost as tall as he was. Their facades were metal and grey hard plastic, and dozens of lights flickered on and off, in green, red and white, speaking a secret language, performing tasks Ibrahim couldn’t even guess at.
“They’re thinking.”
Ibrahim jumped, and turned to face the door.
Raj had raised his voice high enough to be heard above the music, the cooling units, and the machines.
“Do you know much about computers?” he asked.
Ibrahim shook his head. “Not really. Nah.”
“These are called servers,” Raj said. Ibrahim noticed for the first time that he had two apples in his hands. He extended one to Ibrahim. “They ‘serve’ or relay information to other computers.”
Ibrahim put down the broom he was holding and peeled off his latex gloves, wiping his hands on his jeans before taking the apple.
“Right now, these computers just have information that we put in them, and they pass that information around inside this building, and among a few others our company owns,” Raj said matter-of-factly. “So, it’s an internal network at the moment. But soon, we’ll have servers that connect with computers not just part of our network, and just elsewhere in the city, and the country, but the entire world.”
“Sounds like sci-fi.”
Raj nodded. “Except it’s sci-fact. Not fiction. Already, there’s a vast network being built and pretty soon everyone will be able to plug into it, and share information, and ask each other questions. Libraries, post offices, other forms of communication might become obsolete. Maybe we won’t even need telephones any longer.”
Ibrahim nodded, unsure of why dude felt moved to come find the person cleaning his office, just to shoot the breeze about advances in technology.
“I was about to have my evening meal,” Raj said, as though reading Ibrahim’s question in his eyes. “I wondered if you wanted to join me. It always feels a little pathetic to eat alone, don’t you think?”
~~~
“It’s an acquired taste.”
Despite Ibrahim working to hide it, it must have been obvious how uncertain he was about the creamy, garlic-soaked greens that were on the plate Raj slid his way.
“Kale,” Raj explained. “Eat this every day and it will add years to your life. It’s my take on saag, a traditional Indian dish”
Taking a second bite, Ibrahim let it sit on his tongue for a few seconds before swallowing. With the garlic-infused kale, there was a spicy potato and cauliflower dish, that Raj told him was called gobi aloo.
“I’m sorry there’s no meat,” Raj said. “I’m vegetarian.”
“I don’t miss the meat,” Ibrahim said, honestly. “It’s just … the taste takes some getting used to.”
“Of course it does,” Raj said, the way he said everything, as though it was all self-evident. “We’re so used to processed foods that when we have something live, our taste buds go into shock.”
“You eat like this all the time?” Ibrahim asked. He moved his greens around with his fork, still not sure he liked it.
“Yes. Occasionally I have chocolate. And sometimes I take coffee. But yes.”
Take coffee. Like it was a drug.
“You Muslim or what?”
It didn’t escape Ibrahim that it was a question he often got asked, lately not just because of his name but because there were so many foods he now no longer ate. Especially pork and pork byproducts which seemed everywhere once he stopped having them.
Raj shook his head. “You?”
“No. Not Muslim.”
“Buddhist, or Christian, then?”
Ibrahim shook his head. “Not that either. Not really. Although … yeah, I guess I’m Christian if I’m anything. If I had to choose.”
“But why should you have to choose?” Raj asked. “I refuse to.”
He had open, inquisitive and very dark eyes. The kind that seemed to be always analyzing and discerning. Ibrahim detected in them, interest, but not of a kind he understood or could fully interpret. Not sexual, because he knew what that looked like. In jail, reading sexual interest in the eyes of other men had been a vital, learned skill. Unless you were down for that, you wanted to know how to spot it, and how to communicate that you weren’t down otherwise things could very quickly get out of control. Sex interest and intercourse in jail weren’t always mutual or consensual.
Raj shrugged. “First, we acknowledge that there is a power that controls the universe, right?” he said. “So, if we believe that, that there is something so immense, so awe-inspiring, why should we concern ourselves with defining it? Something so unknowable. Why would we want to contain something so vast into a construct as small as … religion?”
Ibrahim narrowed his eyes. “What’re you? Some kind of … sensei or something?”
Raj laughed. “Sensei means ‘teacher’, Ibrahim,” he said teasingly. “And all I am, is a student.”
“Where at?”
“I didn’t mean l
iterally. I meant …”
“I know. But I’m asking. Do you go to school, or just work here?”
“I work here, and go to Stanford, for now. I should be at MIT next year. And after that, who knows? What about you? Are you a student?”
“Nah, man. I clean buildings. That’s it.”
Raj gave him that searching look again.
“Hmm,” he said. “I see more than that.”
“Why?” Ibrahim challenged. “Something wrong with cleaning buildings?”
“Of course not. All work, if it’s honest, is noble. But in you … I see something else. Something maybe just around the corner. Something much different than you are now.”
“You’re starting to creep me out a little, man,” Ibrahim said, shaking his head.
He was being glib, but for real, this Raj dude, here in this building on the only night Ibrahim was working alone, seemed like he’d been planted by a cosmic force, just to yank his chain.
Raj laughed again. “Before you leave,” he said, “I’ll give you the recipes. In case you want to make it for yourself.”
“Thank you,” Ibrahim said, more out of politeness than any genuine belief that he would try his hand at Indian food.
“So,” he asked after a moment. “What do you do here, man?”
“I write code.”
“Code? Like secret language, or …?”
Raj laughed. “Something like that. The language that computers use to communicate, yes.”
“Sounds … not that interesting.”
“Not at all,” Raj said, sitting upright, his eyes animated. “It’s actually the most exciting development in modern technology in decades. In another twenty years, there will be code that translates almost everything, telling computers how to perform most functions that the human brain can perform. Not just computation, which is what they already now, but decision-making, and reasoning. And they will do it faster, more efficiently, more accurately, and free from the bias that exists in the human mind.”
Courtship: A 'Snowflake' Novel Page 15
